A Closer Look at the Sandy Bridge Die

Aside from a stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I snagged something else of interest at my Intel meeting at CES 2011: a shot of some exposed Sandy Bridge processor die. As a recap SNB is available in three different physical die versions today: quad-core, dual-core with GT1 graphics and dual-core with GT2 graphics. The die sizes and transistor counts are below:

CPU Specification Comparison
CPU	Manufacturing Process	Cores	Transistor Count	Die Size
AMD Thuban 6C	45nm	6	904M	346mm2
AMD Deneb 4C	45nm	4	758M	258mm2
Intel Gulftown 6C	32nm	6	1.17B	240mm2
Intel Nehalem/Bloomfield 4C	45nm	4	731M	263mm2
Intel Sandy Bridge 4C	32nm	4	995M	216mm2
Intel Lynnfield 4C	45nm	4	774M	296mm2
Intel Clarkdale 2C	32nm	2	384M	81mm2
Intel Sandy Bridge 2C (GT1)	32nm	2	504M	131mm2
Intel Sandy Bridge 2C (GT2)	32nm	2	624M	149mm2

Now for the shot:

From left to right we have a dual-core GT2 die, a quad-core die and a 32nm Arrandale die with on-package 45nm HD Graphics GPU. There’s very little difference between the dual-core GT2 die and the quad-core die - each SNB core is fairly small at 32nm.

The comparison to Arrandale is also interesting as it makes dual-core SNB look pretty sensible. But keep in mind that we don’t know the full cost structure for manufacturing at 45nm vs. 32nm. Newer processes tend to be more expensive initially compared to older, more mature processes.